I don’t often write more than 200 words without mentioning modern pterodactyls, but this is different. I now quote myself and hope you enjoy at least some of it, whether it’s funny or thought provoking or just entertaining. If you don’t discover any truth new to you, maybe you’ll get a smile, if not a laugh.

Attempts at humor

If you lead, others will follow, but if nobody wants to lead
then everybody watches football. [Aug 1, 2017]

How many important things cannot easily be learned in a university!
But do not tell that to a student until after graduation. [2021]

One thing we have to get used to about people:
They’re all human.

May the windows of heaven be opened onto my intellect,
that I may remember what I was thinking ten seconds ago. [2021]

This is me in my youth, playing with my cat; he was really good.

Be grateful when somebody’s driving you crazy, at least
you don’t have to walk to the insane asylum. [2021]

It’s been said that if you can’t say anything nice about somebody
don’t say anything at all, but it seems like a long time since I’ve
heard anybody say anything at all about a lawyer. [Sep 29, 2022]

When you see a man with a sour face, don’t tell him to smile. Give him
a wad of hundred-dollar bills: It will give him a smile and be good for
you. . . . I forgot my wallet. [September 29, 2022]

Basic (or subtle) advice

The biggest fool may be the one who spends a lifetime
trying to appear non-foolish. [2022]

All of us are at least part-time fools, so let’s try
to make foolishness only a part-time occupation. [2021]

When you hear the footsteps of opportunity walking toward
your front porch, don’t wait to hear the doorbell: Open the
front door immediately. [2018]

Don’t judge the depth of the water by what floats on the surface. [March 10, 2019]

Weak is the satisfaction of playing alone; seek to be one of those who
play for the higher satisfaction: As a team, strive to win against the
opposition of human weakness. [September 29, 2022]

Human nature

Trust one eyewitness of a plane crash over the imaginations of a hundred professors who’ve agreed how that kind of plane should fly. [Searching for Ropens and Finding God]

Repentance or self improvement

There’s no bad time to pull up weeds; it’s just inconvenient. [July 31, 2019]

Science

Unrestricted skepticism is an enemy of true science. [June 17, 2021]

When all the experts’ explanations fail, consider the idea
that fits many of the facts but runs contrary to a cultural
assumption of those experts.

Splashing his big toe on the surface of a family swimming pool,
no man can prove or disprove the existence of a giant octopus.
But if that man amplifies the sound of that splash and describes
his action as a preliminary investigation into the depths, he can
speculate whatever he wants. And if he waves a university
diploma over that swimming pool, almost everybody will
believe a giant octopus lives there.

Real science is not necessarily sitting in a box having a label including
the word “science.” It’s in how we look into a box.

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Sightings of pterosaurs

This includes, among other things about these shocking flying creatures, hundreds of accounts of non-extinct pterodactyls seen around the world.

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Pterosaurs are not all extinct

Contrary to a popular Western opinion, the idea that all dinosaurs and pterosaurs became extinct many millions of years ago is not “science” but an assumption.

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Non-extinct pterodactyls

A nonfiction-cryptozoology author has analyzed reports of non-extinct pterosaurs, commonly called “pterodactyls” or “flying dinosaurs,” and found how sightings relate to thirty-three states (and Washington D.C.) of the United States.

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I’ve not read The Miracle of Father Kapaun; keep that in mind. I’ve read mostly from the Amazon “Look Inside” excerpts for this nonfiction biography of a war hero.

Let’s examine the technical quality in one brief excerpt, remembering that the quality of ideas, the noble life, the Christ-like example—those can compensate for imperfect English with ease. What follows, I hope, will not distract from the deeper value of this book. For the moment, I merely encourage improvement in writing quality in one detail.

Quality Writing

Consider the following sentence, keeping in mind the context: an army chaplain who assisted wounded soldiers during the Korean War. What do you think of it?

He literally carried a wounded soldier on a long, torturous forced march to the prison camp.

I don’t imply that any basic rule of English has been violated: I see nothing wrong in punctuation or spelling. By the way, if you thought that “torturous” was the wrong word, I disagree, for the soldier was probably suffering pain relevant to a word like “torture.” The problem is subtle.

Whether it’s by a medic or chaplain or regular soldier, a wounded comrade is carried in somebody’s arms. The word “literally” can distract from that simple act, tempting the reader to wonder, for a moment, how a wounded soldier could be non-literally carried. I know this is trivial in itself, but it gives us a clue that the writer is probably not professional, and imperfections can add up over the course of 200 pages.

The point? Avoid any adjective or adverb (or any other word) that will distract from what we want to portray.

A Distracting Metaphor

Accidentally distracting the reader need not come from one word. A poorly thought out metaphor can be distracting, as in the following example of my own making, keeping to the same subject:

Using the word “literally” in the above sentence is not in itself disastrous, not like tripping while carrying a wounded soldier and dropping the man onto the ground.

Notice how the above metaphor does the opposite of what is intended? We imagine the fall and the poor injured soldier hitting the ground—a serious accident—but the point was intended to be that something is not disastrous. Beware of putting “not” in front of a metaphor.

The Miracle of Father Kapaun

While writing this post, two or more copies of The Miracle of Father Kapaun may have been sold on Amazon, for it’s now ranked #574. The quality of English is not a strain on sales of this book, or many other books I suppose, when the interest and value is great.

Priest, Soldier and Korean War Hero

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I recommend Writing Tools, by Roy Peter Clark, for many reasons, one of which is the first chapter, “Begin sentences with subjects and verbs.” Don’t call me a hypocrite, if you’ve read something I wrote before 2012. I didn’t know any better, before I read Writing Tools, so read something I wrote more recently.

I don’t mean to imply that Steinbeck’s adherence to the general rule is my model for writing. If it were, I would have learned little from the first chapter of Writing Tools. But that rule I now hold in high esteem: Keep subject and verb near the beginning, most of the time.

With all the virtue in that ideal (making sentences more clear), I still am entranced by Melville’s opening in Moby Dick. If I recall correctly, the second sentence begins with, “Some years ago, having little money in my purse, and nothing to interest me onshore . . .” How I love that form of sentence! Beginning to read such a novel, I can snuggle the small of my back into the pillow on my couch and put up my feet, before the story action calls away my attention. It gives me time to enjoy the anticipation.

With all that said, if I recall correctly, the first sentence in Moby Dick is, “Call me Ishmael,” a perfect preface for a long periodic sentence. The key is in the balance from sentence to sentence.

Call me impatient, but with little time for long novels and almost no interest in details involving whaling ships and their sailors and captains, I don’t think I ever finished reading Moby Dick. But I began my second reading of Writing Tools immediately after my first reading of it. If you are a less-experienced writer than me, your journey of discovery in Clark’s book will be worth what little money you have in your purse.

And remember, keep subjects and verbs near the beginnings of your sentences . . . most of the time.

I just received a dog-eared nonfiction book from an associate, a man who has more field experience, in cryptozoology, than I have. I learned much, but not from the content of the book itself: I am the author. I learned from the hand-written notes in that copy.

I had assumed that this second edition had been well edited, although editing had been done only by me. My friend’s detailed comments (on some pages, filling up much of the blank space) made it obvious that a third edition is in order. Of course, that decision needs to be taken in context: Using POD (publishing on demand), I had approved that second edition just a few days before I discovered a major typo on the back cover, so I had already been planning on a third edition.

For the most part, my associate’s work was neither substantive editing nor copy editing. He was setting me straight regarding his perspectives and opinions on several details covered in the book (some details are beyond the experience of any but a few cryptozoologists in the world). How important is peer review!

To the novice writer of nonfiction, I suggest the following order, after you are sure of a market for your book and a means to following through with marketing (some writers write books on those subjects; take marketing seriously).

1. Write your book, rewriting it to some degree but not too deeply into improving the English . . . not yet.
2. Give a copy to a trusted associate who is an expert in the field. Review the comments, more than once before deciding what needs changing.
3. Perfect the manuscript as best you can, whatever types of editing you do.
4. Consider professional substantive editing.
5. Consider professional copy editing.

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About Jonathan Whitcomb

Fear not the light of unfamiliar hue
Washing sand at first
Then penetrating the depths
It bids a hidden feast emerge at last

When is the editing really completed? The words of my sacrament hymn (what I originally thought would be only a song) “Through my Savior” began to form in the late 1980’s, with occasional revisions, every few years. The music was likewise revised, including the 2011 hymn arrangement. In the past few days[mid-2011], I kept finding better words and phrases, even adding a new verse.

This morning I revised the first verse, again. Now (again) I feel sure that this is the final version of this hymn. [It has now been revised many times from mid-2011 through the end of March of 2015.]

The page linked above includes “Behold the Great Redeemer Die” by Eliza R. Snow, for it includes much that is lacking in my sacrament hymn, in particular details about the last few hours of the Savior’s mortal life.

So when do we stop improving what we have written and begin another work? In my case, I consider myself to have been a non-writer during most of the past twenty-two years, with occasional songs and short poems being exceptions; in addition, most of those years were spent procrastinating revising “Through my Savior,” not actually revising it. In general, we set aside revising and step up to a new work when the overall needs (for both writer and readers) tip the balance, causing us to step forward: when the value of starting something new overrides the value of revising the old.

On a sidenote, unrelated to writing but a critical principle mentioned in “Through my Savior,” is forgiveness. We must remember to forgive and forget.

Addendum #1:

It’s now nineteen days later: I have again revised a few words, making the sacrament song a bit more vague in the fourth line of the second verse (and so making it more applicable to more individuals) and changing “my” to “the” in the third line.

Addendum #2:

It’s now twenty-one months later: I have again revised some lines, this time where I have always been less than satisfied, at the beginning of the first verse:

Father in Heaven, I know my weakness

Thy name is blessed; bless me in my need.

Through thy Beloved, in this assembling,

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* A new site on sacrament hymns in general *

Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, understand your choices involving truth and error in human characters and in human beliefs. Consider a balance between extremes, not to ever compromise the truth but to perceive and elucidate, sometimes separate and label, the truths and errors that sometimes cause conflict between opposing camps, including conflicts between opposing human philosophies.

How refreshing to enjoy a family movie in which most of the characters are reasonably human! That balance generally comes not from the acting talent: The script writer created that balance. Compare that with a movie in which each character is firmly entrenched in one of two camps: bad guys who want to destroy the universe versus good guys who want to save it.

But bad-versus-good (which can be considered a version of “truth-versus-error”), has a competitor, in nonfiction writing in particular: competition between philosophical camps in which both sides have a mixture of truth and error. I write from experience, for both of my books relate to a contest of philosophies in American culture, and both philosophies have a mixture of truth and error.

Before delving into details about my own writings, consider what every LDS author should know about “bulverism,” a word invented by C. S. Lewis. Wikipedia quotes him thus:

You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. [Lewis recognized that as proper and that what follows is wrong.] The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.

Perhaps you have never been guilty of commiting bulverism yourself; but what if you become a victim of someone else’s bulverism? Become aware of this problem, this faulty unfair approach that avoids reasoning, and when you become a victim don’t retaliate with your own bulverism but stear back to reasoning. Plow into the subject itself, straight into it, without questioning your opponents motivations or intelligence or qualifications. At the end of the field, after finishing that straight furrow, you might take a few seconds or so to chase away the rat that’s trying to make a nest in your field; never before finishing a furrow.

I write nonfiction cryptozoology books. I rarely mention Loch Ness or Bigfoot, for I specialize in eyewitness accounts of apparent living pterosaurs. I know that’s abscure, having written two books to become the world’s most prolific writer on the subject. Truth-plus-error has become an important part of my approach, for most of my associates in living-pterosaur investigations are Young Earth Creationists, believing the universe to be not much older than six thousand years. I strongly support the truths they recognize in the Bible, including the beginning of the human family with Adam and Eve; I do not support the idea of a young universe. Writing sometimes requires delicate balancing.